We just wrote an extended blog post that explains the benefits of "chunking" your training materials and gives tips of how to do it. Click here to read the extended article on chunking. Otherwise, if you’d like a high-level overview and then would like to see an example of chunking applied to manufacturing training, read on. Need help with the training program at your manufacturing company? Check out the family of learning management systems (LMSs) by Convergence Training, our off-the-shelf e-learning courses on standard manufacturing topics, and our custom training options. The Bird’s Eye View on Chunking Training Materials Chunking refers to taking training material (during the design phase), breaking them up into little "bite-sized" parts, and then organizing them in a way that makes the material easier for your employees to learn. Chunking is helpful because of how our brains work-in particular, the limits on our working memory to hold only about four bits of information at a time. Although learners who are novices or experts in a given topic can each only remember about four chunks at a time, experts can remember bigger chunks. You should arrange chunks within training materials in a way that makes it easier for your employees to understand and remember them. Some organizational methods include job sequence, dependent learning, cause and effect, and whole to parts, but there are more. Chunking training materials begins at a high level-the entire curriculum, for example-and then works its way down through modules, lessons, courses, and screens (or similar sub-divisions of your training materials). An Example of Chunking Manufacturing Training At Convergence Training, we use chunking techniques when we design and create our e-learning modules. And that pays off for our customers because their employees learn the materials more quickly, readily, and effectively. For example, consider our Wire Rope Basics e-learning course (which is one title in our Health & Safety training library) and then give thought to how the various aspects of chunking, described below, will make it easier for your employees to understand this topic that they may need to know to perform their job well and safely. Chunking Within Our Manufacturing Curriculum The course is just one part of our Cranes and Rigging series of courses. That is just one part of our Operations & Maintenance library of courses. Chunking Within the Course The entire course is only 26 minutes long, including the content screens, practice questions, and course-ending test. The course is composed of multiple screens, each quite short. The course includes practice questions every few screens to review new material. Chunking Within the Screen The screen in the sample (below) runs for only 31 seconds and explains only a few things: What a core is What a strand is What a wire is All of this makes it very easy for your employees to grasp and retain this information about wire ropes and how it relates to rigging. The post Chunking Manufacturing Training: How to Help Your Employees Learn appeared first on Convergence Training Blog.

You’ve probably heard of 5S. If so, you know it’s a method for organizing a work area to increase efficiency and productivity while reducing waste. If you didn’t know that before, now you do. Over time, people have modified 5S by adding a new "S" to create 6S systems. One of the most common of the 6S systems results from adding Safety to 5S. This is sometimes called 5S+, 6S, lean 6S, 6S safety, or lean 6S safety. In this article, we’ll learn more about 6S and how you can use it to create a more organized, efficient, productive, and safe workplace. Need training materials to increase efficiency and safety at your workplace? Check out our library of e-learning courses and our learning management systems, or just contact Convergence Training.  What Is 5s? Let’s begin by getting those who haven’t heard of 5S up to speed. Here are a few definitions of 5S to get you in the ballpark. US EPA: "5S is a system to reduce waste and optimize productivity through maintaining an orderly workplace and using visual cues to achieve more consistent operational results. Implementation of this method "cleans up" and organizes the workplace basically in its existing configuration, and it is typically the first lean method which organizations implement." Kaizen Institute: "5S relates to workplace organization and forms a solid foundation upon which many organizations base their drive for continuous improvement. It is equally applicable & successful in all sectors helping to achieve high impact results. It is a systematic and methodical approach allowing teams to organize their workplace in the safest and most efficient manner." Lean Manufacturing Institute: "5S is a simple tool for organizing your workplace in a clean, efficient and safe manner to enhance your productivity, visual management and to ensure the introduction of standardized working." Wikipedia: "5S is the name of a workplace organization method that uses a list…(that describes) how to organize a work space for efficiency and effectiveness by identifying and storing the items used, maintaining the area and items, and sustaining the new order." Got it? Good. Now let’s dive a little deeper. What Are the 5S’s in 5S? As you probably guessed, the 5S method includes five steps or phases, each of which begin with the letter S. Because 5S originated in Japan, each "S" is the first letter of a Japanese word. Fortunately for English speakers, however, each of those Japanese words have been translated to an English word that also begins with the letter "S." They’re listed below. Sort (Seiri) Sorting is the first phase of 5S. When you sort, you remove items from the work area that aren’t needed for current production needs. This may mean you store them somewhere for long-term storage, or perhaps you’ll even dispose of them. The process of red tagging is designed to help you sort. Just go around the work area and put a red tag on everything that’s unnecessary. Then you can collect all the red-tagged items, put them in a central holding area, and deal with them appropriately item-by-item. Straighten (Seiton)-Also Known as Set in Order Once the unnecessary items have been removed, organize the rest of the items so they’re in the best possible location. Put things in place so they’re easy to access when they’re needed and so their location helps to increase efficiency and decrease waste. While sorting, consider marking areas with tape or paint so it’s obvious what goes where. Below is a short sample from the 5S e-learning course by Convergence Training. It covers the second S-straighten-and demonstrates putting things in their place and marking their location. Shine (Seiso)-Also Known as Sweep or Sanitize After unnecessary items have been removed and necessary items have  been straightened, then clean up the workplace. Don’t just do this once. Instead, set up a daily cleaning routine. One benefit of daily cleaning is you can use it as an opportunity to inspect the work area and machines for wear and damage. Standardize (Seiketsu) Once you’ve sorted, straightened, and shined, it’s time to standardize. This means identifying best practices to keep things as you’ve got them now and creating consistent procedures for which jobs are done efficiently. Include sort, straighten, and shine in people’s job responsibilities so they’ll be done consistently. Sustain (Shitsuke) The final element of 5S is to sustain the practice-meaning, keep it going. Signs, posters, meetings, and other methods of communication can help keep the 5S method and practices fresh and make sure things don’t spiral out of hand again. Remember it’s not easy to change a company’s culture, and people may have a tendency to slip back to the old ways if you don’t keep the 5S message fresh in their minds. Adding Safety to 5S: Lean 6S Adding safety to 5S can be as simple as remembering to keep safety in mind at each of the 5S steps. Let’s look at some examples of this. During the Sort phase, you can use red tags for items that need to be removed and put yellow tags on EHS hazards. The red-tagged items go to a central holding spot, and there someone decides what to do with them. The yellow-tagged items are evaluated separately to see if any safety (or any EHS issues, really) need to be addressed. When you’re Straightening, you can organize items not just to maximize efficiency, but with an eye toward safety as well. For example, don’t just put things in place to maximize worker productivity, but you can also consider safety/EHS issues such as ergonomic strain for workers at this point. And during the Shine phase, you can add EHS concerns to a cleaning checklist for workers to perform. For example, when you’re cleaning and tidying you can also check to make sure chemical containers are securely closed. Or, you can think of Safety as a separate step-after Sort, Straighten, and Shine, and before Standardize and Sustain. So, after you’ve Sorted, Straightened, and Shined, make a separate round of inspections for safety issues. Then, when you Standardize and Sustain, you can keep the safety issues in mind as well as efficiency issues. Conclusion Hope that helps get you started with 6S/Lean 6S. Keep your eyes on our blog for more articles about 6S in the future-we think we’ll develop a 6S audit checklist for you (with the help of our friends from the EPA). And we’re planning some additional articles on related topics such as lean manufacturing and kaizen. If you have any experience using 6S or tips for others, please leave them in the comments section  below. The post 5S + Safety = Lean 6S Safety appeared first on Convergence Training Blog.

Hello. We’re back and we’re continuing our look at ANSI Z490.1, the standard that lists "Criteria for Accepted Practices in Safety, Health, and Environmental Training." In this post, we’re going to take an in-depth look at Section 5, which is all about delivering EHS training. The strong focus is on the EHS trainer in this one, plus there’s some stuff about the training environment. Before we begin, just a quick reminder of the posts we’ve written about already in this series: Introduction to ANSI Z490.1 Section 1 (Scope, Purpose, and Application); Section 2 (Definitions); and Section 3 (EHS Training Program Administration and Management) Section 4 (Designing Effective EHS Training) If you haven’t checked out those previous articles, it’s not necessary to do it before you read this one. But, it might help. OK, let’s get started. Need help with your EHS training program? Check out the EHS e-learning courses from Convergence Training, or our LMSs, or just contact us.   Effective EHS Trainers Effective EHS trainers-meaning, trainers that can effectively help your employees learn EHS materials-should have two characteristics. First, they should be subject matter experts. The standard says they "shall have an appropriate level of technical knowledge, skills, or abilities in the subject they teach," so they don’t have to be subject matter experts in the way that Einstein was a subject matter expert on physics. But, they need to know their stuff. "Appropriate" seems to be the key word here. And second, they should be "competent" in their training delivery techniques and in training in a manner that’s appropriate for adult learners. In addition, keep the following in mind: Trainers should maintain their skills and knowledge through continuing education, work experience, or other methods Training program administrators should create documents that show how EHS trainers comply to these expectations. This can include resumes, continuing education certificates, licenses, registrations, and/or simple experience sheets. There’s no one defined way to do this properly-just do it. Effective EHS Training Methods and Materials Delivery of effective EHS training and EHS training materials includes: Planning and preparation before training delivery Proper management of the learning environment (where the training will occur) Proper and effective use of training delivery aids and technologies to assist in learning Use of adult learning principles Feedback and communication with the learners Let’s look at each of these in more detail. EHS Training Planning and Preparation This stage includes getting the trainer ready. Most notably, this means making sure the trainer: Meets the qualifications for an effective, appropriate trainer listed above Knows the course’s learning objectives (read more about learning objectives here and here) Knows the course’s training materials Knows and knows how to use the primary training delivery method and the backup/alternate delivery method  Managing the Learning Environment for EHS Training Learning happens best in an appropriate learning environment that meets the needs of the trainees. In particular, the training environment should: Be safe, with no safety hazards Have an appropriate climate, including temperature and air quality Have appropriate lighting Have appropriate seating and/or work areas Be set up with proper ergonomics for the learners Provide access to water and restrooms Have enough emergency exits and a planned evacuation route Finally, the learning environment should be one that helps facilitate learning. The Association for Talent Development has some good books on this kind of stuff. Effective Use of Training Delivery Methods and Training Materials The first thing the trainer should do is to be familiar with the training delivery methods and training materials that were designed and created during the training development phase of this process and to apply them so that the learning objectives are supported. For more about training development and learning objectives, please see our previous post in this series: Section 4 (Designing Effective EHS Training) Application of Adult Learning Principles for Effective EHS Training In most cases, you’ll be training adults, so it’s important to know and use what training and development experts call adult learning principles. If you’re not aware of adult learning principles, you should know that adults: Are self-directed Bring a lifetime of knowledge and experience to training Are goal-oriented Want training to be relevant and task-oriented Learn when they are motivated to learn Like to be and feel respected Click here to read more about adult learning principles and how to apply them. Feedback and Communication One of the fundamental concepts of training is that you’ve got to give the learners (or trainees, or employees, or whatever you want to call them) the chance to ask questions, get feedback on their questions or performances, and generally feel free to communicate openly and effectively about the training topic. Trainers should foster an environment that encourages and supports questions and comments, and they should build-in opportunities for practice and feedback. Remember to always create an atmosphere in which the learners feel safe asking questions; never make fun of or shame people when they ask something. EHS Training Delivery: Effective EHS Trainers and Training Environments And that concludes our look at section 5 of ANSI Z490.1. If you apply these guidelines for your EHS trainers and your EHS training environments, you’ll find that the effectiveness of your EHS training program should increase. Let us know if you’ve got any tips for doing these things. That’s what the comments field is for below. Otherwise, keep your eyes on the blog for our next post in this series, which will look at evaluating your EHS trainings.   The post Effective EHS Trainers and Training Environments: ANSI Z490.1, Section 5 appeared first on Convergence Training Blog.

We just wrote an extended blog post that explains the benefits of "chunking" your training materials and gives tips for how to do it. Click here to read the extended article on chunking. Otherwise, if you’d like a high-level overview of chunking and then would like to see how you can use chunking to make your mining safety training program more effective, read on. The Bird’s Eye View on Chunking Training Materials Chunking refers to taking training material (during the design phase), breaking them up into little "bite-sized" parts, and then organizing them in a way that makes the material easier for your employees to learn. Chunking is helpful because of how our brains work-in particular, the limits on our working memory to hold only about four bits of information at a time. Although learners who are novices or experts in a given topic can each only remember about four chunks at a time, experts can remember bigger chunks. You should arrange chunks within training materials in a way that makes it easier for your employees to understand and remember them. Some organizational methods include job sequence, dependent learning, cause and effect, and whole to parts, but there are more. Chunking training materials begins at a high level-the entire curriculum, for example-and then works its way down through modules, lessons, courses, and screens (or similar sub-divisions of your training materials). An Example of Chunking Mining Safety Training At Convergence Training, we use chunking techniques when we design and create our e-learning modules. And that pays off for our customers because their employees learn the materials more quickly, readily, and effectively. For example, consider our Physical Characteristics of Surface Mines e-learning course (which is one title in our Mining Safety-MSHA training library) and consider how the various aspects of chunking, described below, will make it easier for your employees to understand this critical aspect of job safety. Chunking Within Our Mining Safety Curriculum Our Mining Safety training library includes a large number of courses that can be used to train miner’s for MSHA Part 46 and MSHA Part 48 training compliance. Our courses can be "grouped" to create the training programs required by MSHA, such as the New Miner, Newly Hired Experienced Miner, or Annual Refresher training programs required by 46.5, 46.6, or 46.8. Our Physical Characteristics of Surface Mines is just one part of our Introduction to the Mine Environment series of courses [as required for the New Miner training program by 46.5(b) and for the Newly Hired Experienced Miner training program by 46.6(b), for example]. Chunking Within the Course The entire course is only 9 minutes long, including the content screens, practice questions, and course-ending test. The course is composed of multiple screens, each quite short. The course includes practice questions every few screens to review new material. Chunking Within the Screen The screen in the sample (below) runs for only 74 seconds and explains only a few related things: What a highwall is Slope of highwalls What an angle of repose is Factors that make highwalls unstable All of this makes it very easy for your employees to grasp these important mining safety topics. The post Chunking Mining Safety Training Materials: Improve Your Mine Safety Training appeared first on Convergence Training Blog.

Onboarding new employees can be time consuming, difficult, and inefficient. And, for a number of reasons-it’s often ineffective. If you’ve done it before, you already know this. You can onboard new employees more quickly, efficiently, and effectively by using a learning management system (LMS). An LMS is a software application that companies can use to import, create, assign, deliver, and track training. You can use an LMS to deliver all sorts of training. This can include training specific to various job roles, HR training, and safety training. And-yes-you can also use an LMS when onboarding new employees. Looking for an LMS to help you with new employee onboarding and other training needs? Download the free LMS Buyer’s Guide Checklist at the bottom of this post or check out the family of LMSs that Convergence Training offers for companies of different sizes, industries, and training needs. How an LMS Helps You Improve Your Experience Onboarding New Employees There are many ways using an LMS can improve your onboarding program. Let’s look at a few of them. Use a Blended Learning Solution to Deliver Your New Employee Onboarding Without an LMS, companies often rely on training of one or two types when onboarding new employees. For example, they may use just instructor-led (face-to-face training), or they may use just written materials (such as Word documents and PowerPoint presentations). Or maybe they’ll use a combination of the two, at best. But an LMS can make it easier for you to use a  blended learning solution instead. This lets you make use of e-learning, video, web-based training, written materials, face-to-face discussions, and more. And having the freedom to pick and choose training types will allow you onboard new employees more effectively while spending less. Provide A Standard, Consistent "Core" Onboarding Materials to Each New Employee Without an LMS, it’s easy to accidentally  provide different onboarding materials to each new employee. For example, you might forget to cover one important training topic with one employee. Or you may include all the necessary topics, but maybe with one employee you accidentally grabbed an old version of a specific document instead of a new, revised version. Putting the onboarding materials into an LMS and assigning them to all new employees solves this problem. You can be sure each employee receives the same consistent and standard message. And you don’t need to be told how important it is to provide a consistent, standard training message in your onboarding. Provide Additional Job-Specific Training, Beyond the "Core" Onboarding, To Employees in Various Job Roles It’s great to be able to provide the same onboarding materials to everyone. For example, you may want everyone to read your company manual or to read your drug and alcohol policy. But in addition to those "core" materials, you may want to assign different training materials to new employees based on their specific job role, title, or department. For example, maybe your production workers should be assigned some safety courses that aren’t relevant for your accounting staff. And maybe your accounting workers should be assigned some training about Internet use that’s not relevant for your production workers. Your LMS should make it easy for you to add these training assignments to specific departments or teams in addition to the "core" onboarding materials you’d assign to everyone. Show New Employees You Care about Your Policies, Processes, and Procedures Delivering onboarding training to new employees in a haphazard, chaotic manner risks sending the wrong message to your new employees: although we’re covering this material now, it’s not something we really care about. And that’s not what you want, obviously. Presenting an organized, well-structured onboarding sequence through an LMS makes it clear to your employees that the materials are important to you. And that helps set expectations that your new employees should pay attention to and follow the onboarding materials. Show New Employees You Value Them You work hard, invest a lot of time, and put a lot of money into finding good new employees. You hired them because you value them and because you think they can do the job well. So why welcome them to the company with a half-baked onboarding program? Does that send a "Hey, we’re excited to have you on your team" message to the new employee? No, it doesn’t. What it does suggest to the new employee is they’re not so special after all. Just another cog in the machine. Instead, why not welcome the employee with an impressive, well-planned, comprehensive onboarding delivered through an LMS that will make them feel valued? Employees who feel valued are more likely to be engaged, to work well, to stay with you for a long time, and to bring the value you’re looking for. Deliver Materials to New Employees and Set Due Dates When You Need to Making sure you’re getting the right onboarding materials to your new worker is important, but it’s not the only important thing. You’ll also want to deliver the materials at the right time. Do your employees need to complete training  before the first day they arrive at work? Do they need to complete training after they arrive at work but before they hit the production floor? Do they need to complete some materials now and other materials at a later point? With a robust LMS, all of these onboarding delivery needs can be managed with only a few clicks. Keep Accurate Training Completion Records and Quickly Run Reports Many companies keep records of completed training-including new employee onboarding-in a confusing series of paper-based documents (which are stored in manila envelopes in metal filing cabinets in various out-of-the-way places), Excel spreadsheets, and Access databases. If this is you now, or if this has  been you in the past, you know what a mess this can be and how inefficient it is. On the other hand, companies that use an LMS to assign and deliver training often can’t stop talking about how easy tracking completion and running reports becomes. Without exception, they swear they’d never go back to the old ways. Evaluate the Effectiveness of Your Onboarding Training Program What good are training materials or even records of completion if you can’t tell if new employees are actually learning? You can talk to you’re blue in the face without knowing if a new employee understood their onboarding. Likewise, you can sit them in front of countless videos or have them read as many documents or PowerPoints as you want, but you won’t know if people are learning without some form of assessment. With an LMS, you can easily create a quiz, assign and deliver it, and track answers, percentages, and completions. This will help you determine if each individual employee understands the material appropriately. It will also help you identify points when your own onboarding materials aren’t as effective as you’d like. Brand Your Training Your new employee onboarding materials include the core values and foundational principles of your company. Why should you deliver them in a hodge-podge of generic documents? Your LMS should allow you to brand your URL, to display your company name and logo, and even to brand the individual courses within the LMS. Why not really make your onboarding materials your own? Your workplace is special-show new employees how proud you are of it. Save Time and Money Using an inefficient method to onboard a single employee chews up quite a bit of time and money, although you may not notice it. But multiply that same investment for each new employee over a year or several years, and you’ll see how much money you’re wasting. And that doesn’t count the indirect expenses you suffer as a result of sending a poorly onboarded employee to his or her job, or the even greater costs that come with losing dissatisfied, poorly trained employees and having to hire replacements over and over again. Get an LMS and you’ll immediately cut  back on all that wasted time and money. Using an LMS When Onboarding New Employees By now, you should see there are many benefits to using an LMS when onboarding your new employees. The question remains, though-which LMS? To be honest, there’s no single LMS that’s right for every company. If you’re decided to look into getting an LMS to onboard new employees and manage your other training needs, it’s a good idea to take some time to evaluate your options carefully. To help you with that, we’ve created an LMS Buyer’s Guide complete with a downloadable checklist. Click the link to read the buyer’s guide (where you can also download the checklist) or just download the checklist below. Hope it helps-good luck in your search. Let us know in the comments field below if you have any questions.   The post Using an LMS to Onboard Your New Hires More Effectively, Efficiently appeared first on Convergence Training Blog.

We just read Robert Mager’s Goals Analysis, one of six books in the classic "Mager’s Six Pack" series. In this article, we’ll give you a short book review. We have another article if you’d like to study his goals analysis method in more detail. Before we begin, know that this is part of a series of articles looking at the books and ideas in Mager’s Six Pack. So far, we’ve also got articles on the following: Book Review: Mager’s Preparing Instructional Objectives Mager’s Instructional Objectives-How to Write Performance-Based Learning Objectives Mager’s Goals Analysis-How to Analyze and Set Goals Mager’s Analyzing Performance Problems-Or, You Really Oughta Wanna With that out of way, let’s get to this book review. Need any help with your training program at work? Check out the e-learning courses from Convergence Training, our family of learning management systems, or just contact us. Mager’s Goals Analysis and "Fuzzies" So what’s it about, you ask? The basic idea is this. First, Mager says that when we create goals, we often create abstract goals and as a result it’s impossible to later know if you’ve definitely met them. For example, maybe you want to be a "better person," or a "lean company," or a "safe company," or maybe you want "efficient workers." Mager calls all these vague, abstract goals "fuzzies." They’re fuzzy because no two people can agree that the goal has definitely been met. There’s no obvious, specific criteria against which real-world behavior can be compared to see if the behavior meets the goal. As you may have guessed, Mager says we shouldn’t have fuzzy goals. Instead, he wants us to set concrete, specific goals. The kind of goals that make it easy to tell if someone has met them. So instead of being a better person, maybe you want to donate to charity five times a year. Instead of being a lean company, maybe you want to reduce operational waste by 20 percent. Instead of being a safe company, maybe you want to reduce your injury and illness rate by 50 percent. And instead of having efficient workers, maybe you want your workers to produce 10 percent more. Note that all of these more concrete goals have something in common: they’re actual performances. How to Recognize Fuzzy Goals Now that Mager’s given you a goal-to write concrete goals instead of fuzzy goals-he starts to give you a method. First, he tells you how to determine if you’ve got a fuzzy goal. Basically, this boils down to asking one question. In Mager’s own words, this question is: "Is there a single behavior or class of behaviors that will indicate the presence of the alleged performance, about which there would be general agreement?" If you answer "no" to the question above, you’ve got yourself a fuzzy. If you answer "yes," you’ve got a goal. As is true in many of Mager’s books, this book gives you practice exercises and checklists to help you see if you can do this. Writing Performance-Based Goals Next, Mager gives a five-step method for creating concrete, performance-based goals. We’ve covered that method in more detail in our other article about this book, but here’s the big-picture, bird’s-eye view. Write down the goal Write down everything a person would have to do for you to agree that he or she has met the goal Review the items you listed in step 2 and revise Write a complete sentence that describes each of the items on your list after step 3 Test the sentences you wrote in step 4 to make sure they’re complete  Great. But How Was the Book? Now that you know what the book’s about and have a general idea of Mager’s method, we can turn to the interesting part of a book review. What kind of book was it? Was it helpful and informative? Was it a fun read? Along those lines, it had a lot in common with other Mager books I’ve read. First, it was short. My copy has 138 pages. Second, it was fun to read. It included sections where Mager would pose a question, the reader would answer, and you’ve proceed to one page or another depending on the answer you chose. Third, it had a lot of built-in practice exercises, checklists, and diagrams. And finally, it was written in the conversational, joking style that Mager uses in all his books. So, all told, was it a worthwhile book to read? Yep. Check it out if you get a chance.     The post Book Review: Robert Mager’s Goals Analysis appeared first on Convergence Training Blog.

Here’s another installment in our look at ANSI Z490.1, the standard that lists "Criteria for Accepted Practices in Safety, Health, and Environmental Training." This post focuses on best practices for evaluating how well your employees learned from their EHS training and, of course, evaluating your training itself. That’s what the standard covers in section 6. Before we begin, just a quick reminder of the posts we’ve written about already in this series: Introduction to ANSI Z490.1 Section 1 (Scope, Purpose, and Application); Section 2 (Definitions); and Section 3 (EHS Training Program Administration and Management) Section 4 (Designing Effective EHS Training) Section 5 (EHS Trainers and EHS Training Environments) It’s not necessary to read those earlier articles before you read this one. On the other hand, if you’re the kind of person who likes to get the full story in the right order all at once, it may not be a bad idea to back up and read those earlier ones first. Need help with your EHS training program? Check out the EHS e-learning courses from Convergence Training, or our LMSs, or just contact us. Evaluating EHS Training As you probably guessed, the purpose of evaluating EHS training is to see if it the training was effective. Are your employees "learning" from the training? Does the training lead to the desired change in their behaviors? Does one or more individual employee need additional help after the training? Do you need to modify the training? Section 6 of ANSI Z490.1 provides best practices and criteria for EHS training evaluation. Let’s look at some of those criteria in the order in which you’d come across them as an EHS training manager or EHS training developer. While Developing/Designing EHS Training Before you deliver the training to employees, you’ve got to design it and develop it (that’s what’s covered in Section 4 and our article about that section, How to Develop Effective EHS Training). Even that early, you should be thinking about your post-training evaluation of the learners and evaluation of the training materials themselves. During the design and development phase, you should: Determine if it’s appropriate to provide a pre-test that would allow the learner to skip the training if he/she can pass the pre-test and, if so, to develop the pre-test Determine how the learners will be evaluated post-training Determine what the learner must do to successfully complete the evaluation Create procedures for helping or retraining workers who do not successfully complete the evaluation The Post-Training Learner Evaluation Now that you know the work you’re supposed to do during design and development, let’s turn our attention to the nature of effective evaluations. First, the evaluation of the learner should be based on the learner’s ability to satisfy the learning objectives for the training. Click here or here to read more about learning objectives, or read our overview of the Section of ANSI Z490.1 that addresses creating learning objectives. In addition, the evaluation should be both "reliable" and a "valid measure." What does this mean? Here’s what the standard says: Reliable: Gives consistent results over time Valid measure: Reflects the knowledge, skills, abilities, or attitudes specified in the learning objective As you’d guess, evaluations must comply with all applicable EHS regulations. For example, a regulation may include a minimum acceptable level of training. Be sure your learners can at least meet that minimum, although of course it’s alright if they exceed the minimum. Next, let’s turn our attention to the type of evaluation to use. The evaluation should include one, and may include all, of the following approaches: Learner reaction: Surveys or other methods to get the trainees feedback about the training, including how well they learned, how well the training materials were designed, and how well the trainer performed. Knowledge, skill, ability evaluation/test: This can include a written test, oral exam, a demonstration of a real-life job skill in the real or simulated work environment, the completion of a project, or other forms of evaluation. The test should align with the learning objective and the type of test will be influenced by the learning objective. Pre-tests and post-tests may be used as a way to determine how much the trainees learned. Technology, including online or computerized assessments, may be used. On-the-job performance observation: Observing the employee’s real on-the-job behavior at the workplace to see if the employee is correctly applying the knowledge, skills, abilities, or attitudes the training was intended to convey. This may include a comparison of observations made before and after training, and can include observations from customers, coworkers. Effect of training on organization as a whole: Analyzing data to determine the effect of the training on key performance indicators (KPIs) such as safety behaviors; safety records; implementation of preventive measures; increased use of PPE; reduction in injuries, illnesses, and near-misses; reduction in workman’s comp claims; increased regulatory compliance; and higher revenues and ROI. This four-level evaluation method is essentially the same as what learning professionals know as Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation. Click to read more about Kirkpatrick’s evaluation theory. Learner Evaluation Results for EHS Training Now let’s see what you should do with the information from the evaluation. Trainers should provide trainees with the results of any training evaluation. The learner should then have the opportunity to use this feedback as a way to ask for more information, help, or practice. If the learner did not perform satisfactorily on the evaluation, he or she should be provided with additional assistance and/or more training until he or she can satisfy the objectives. As regulations require, learners should be periodically re-trained and re-evaluated. Evaluation the EHS Training Itself and Continuous Improvement EHS training developers and trainers should use the results of the learner evaluations and all other training evaluations to periodically review the effectiveness of the training materials and training presentation themselves. Evaluation should include course content, training delivery methods, additional training materials, trainer performance, learning environment, and more. Conclusion: The Importance of Evaluating EHS Training No doubt you recognized the importance of evaluation the effectiveness of your EHS training and the learning of your employees even before you read this article. With luck, this article has given you some best practices you can use to evaluation your EHS training more effectively. Of course, we encourage you to go get the ANSI Z490.1 standard as well. Hope you found this helpful. Stay tuned for our next post in this series, which will look at documentation and recordkeeping for EHS training.     The post Evaluating EHS Training Effectiveness: ANSI Z490.1, Section 6 appeared first on Convergence Training Blog.

We recently published an article titled What is the Hierarchy of Controls? It turns out the article was quite popular-we had a lot of folks visiting that page to read it. As a result, we decided to create this e-learning course about the hierarchy of controls and offer it to you for free. What’s not to like about a free hierarchy of controls training course? That it, below (scroll down). You can enjoy this in one of two ways (or, both). First, you can watch it right here. Watch it right here, right now, or bookmark this page and come back whenever you want to. Or second, you can download it and import it into your learning management system (LMS). Notice that we just said "and import it into your LMS." What you’ll get when you download this course is a zipped folder in a standard e-learning format called SCORM (read more about SCORM here). If you just try to open the zipped folder and watch something, it won’t work. But if you import the zipped folder into your learning management system (read more about LMSs here), then you can view the course through your LMS and even assign it to your workers. Don’t have an LMS? No problem. You can watch the course right here as much as you want, or you can check out the LMSs that Convergence Training has to offer. Here’s some information about how you can improve your safety training program with e-learning safety courses and an LMS, and here’s a free LMS buyer’s guide for you. Or just contact us and we’ll get you moving in the right direction. Hope you enjoy this. Download Free SCORM Module The post Free Hierarchy of Controls Training Course appeared first on Convergence Training Blog.

We’re happy to announce the completion of a year-long initiative to grow the company’s library of pulp and paper industry training content We recently added 60 more eLearning courses added to our mill employee technical training curriculum. Previous courses, also covering fundamental pulping and papermaking processes, were released in four phases during 2014. This final run of 58 courses includes titles such as "Paper Machine Refining", "Papermaking Process Testing", and "Bleaching Basics", and brings the total number courses in the Convergence pulp & paper training catalog to 185. The courses aim to provide foundational knowledge to new hires or to existing employees transitioning to new jobs within a facility. The nearly 200 courses provide fundamental training to help familiarize new employees with pulp and paper manufacturing facilities and processes. The computer-based eLearning courses are 10-40 minutes each in length, and feature a combination of video-based instruction and interactive knowledge assessments. Developed using our signature blend of detailed 3D models and studio-quality graphics, the contemporary training materials leverage experience gained during our decades-long history in the pulp and paper industry. The training allows for an employee’s understanding of the material to be assessed and reported electronically, within a learning management system, or tested in the field via our tablet-based Mobile training platform. Randy Kohltfarber, President of Convergence Training, says the courses meet a growing need for skills training in the manufacturing industry. "There are large numbers of experienced workers reaching retirement age and the young people being hired to replace them just don’t have the skills to start performing their jobs efficiently right away," said Kohltfarber. "That’s true for manufacturing in general, and it’s especially true for the pulp and paper industry. The courses we’re producing are designed to help speed up that onboarding process." With the completion of the new courses, Kohltfarber believes Convergence has established itself as the foremost provider of computer-based pulp & paper training. "We’ve developed a large content library," says Kohltfarber, "but we’re not done. We’ve committed to producing at least 10 new pulp and paper courses each year, and we’ll continue to make updates to our existing content based on feedback from our customers. The courses have been very well received - people like the way we’ve presented the training and we continue to get suggestions for topics we haven’t covered yet. I think we can continue to develop training on these topics for quite some time."   The post Convergence Pulp & Paper Training Course Catalog Continues to Grow appeared first on Convergence Training Blog.

We just read Robert Mager’s Analyzing Performance Problems, or, You Really Oughta Wanna, one of six books in the classic "Mager’s Six Pack" series. In this article, we’ll give you a short book review. We have another article if you’d like to study his performance problem analysis method in more detail. Before we begin, know that this is part of a series of articles looking at the books and ideas in Mager’s Six Pack. So far, we’ve also got articles on the following: Book Review: Mager’s Preparing Instructional Objectives Book Review: Mager’s Goals Analysis Mager’s Instructional Objectives-How to Write Performance-Based Learning Objectives Mager’s Goals Analysis-How to Analyze and Set Goals Mager’s Analyzing Performance Problems-Or, You Really Oughta Wanna With that out of way, let’s get to this book review. Need any help with your training program at work? Check out the e-learning courses from Convergence Training, our family of learning management systems, or just contact us. Mager’s Analyzing Performance Problems  Mager’s book outlines a simple and orderly method you can use to determine the cause of a performance problem at work and find the best solution(s) for that problem. We’ve described that method in more detail in our Closing Skill Gaps article, so click that link you just passed by if you want to read about the method in depth. But read on for a more superficial understanding. In short, Mager’s method helps you answer the following questions about a perceived performance problem at work: Is it really important? Is the problem that the workers don’t have the necessary skill(s)? If it’s truly a skill gap, why does the skill gap exist and what’s the best way to close it? If it’s not a skill gap (meaning employees DO have the skill but don’t use it), why aren’t they using it? Is there a better way to do the work so that the employees don’t have to perform the skill? Is the individual employee (or employees) incapable of performing the skill no matter how much training is provided? Given the answers to all the above questions, what is the best solution (or the best combination of solutions) to solve the problem?  Great. But How Was the Book? Now that you know what the book’s about and have a general idea of Mager’s method, let’s turn to the fun part of the review. Does it teach worthwhile stuff? Was it a fun read? Would I recommend it? Yes, yes, and yes. To elaborate on that a bit, he provides a method that would be useful for analyzing a performance problem and finding the right solution. So that’s answers the question about "worthwhile stuff." On the "fun read" angle, all of Mager’s books are pretty fun and this is no exception. As he does in other books, in this one he keeps it short, uses a conversational writing style, and is funny. And those are just some of the reasons why my answer to the "would you recommend it" question is a big YES.     The post Book Review: Robert Mager’s Analyzing Performance Problems (or, You Really Oughta Wanna) appeared first on Convergence Training Blog.